SKN | Qivalis Sees Stablecoins Reshaping Global Trade Finance

Key Points:

• Qivalis says stablecoins are moving beyond cross-border payments and increasingly becoming part of the broader trade-finance supply chain.
• The euro-denominated stablecoin issuer has onboarded 37 European banks over the past year and expanded from one employee to approximately 40 staff.
• Qivalis is nearing an Electronic Money Institution license from the Dutch central bank, with plans to launch its regulated euro stablecoin by the end of 2026.

Stablecoins are increasingly moving beyond their role as digital payment instruments and into the infrastructure supporting global trade finance, according to Qivalis CEO and founder Jan-Oliver Sell. The European euro-pegged stablecoin issuer argues that onchain settlement could change how collateral, payments and trade-finance liquidity move across borders, particularly in markets where traditional banking rails remain slower or more fragmented.

Trade Finance Moves Toward Onchain Settlement

Trade finance supports the cash flows behind international commerce, including transactions involving suppliers, buyers, commodities and financial institutions. Sell said conversations across the ecosystem indicate that stablecoins are becoming increasingly relevant in Asia, Latin America and Africa, where cross-border settlement can involve multiple intermediaries and currency conversions.

In one example cited by Sell, a supplier in East Africa could transact with a counterparty in Kazakhstan using stablecoins without converting the digital assets back into fiat currency. That structure potentially allows collateral to move in minutes rather than days, changing the speed at which capital can be reused throughout a trade-finance transaction.

The significance is not simply faster payments. If collateral can circulate continuously onchain, trade-finance funds and businesses could potentially reduce the amount of capital tied up while transactions move through traditional settlement processes.

Stablecoins Add the Missing Cash Leg

Earlier blockchain initiatives from companies such as R3 and Hyperledger focused heavily on digitizing documentation and financial instruments, including letters of credit. Sell argues that these systems lacked an equally efficient onchain cash and payment component.

Stablecoins address that gap by combining programmable blockchain infrastructure with digital representations of fiat currencies. Instead of using distributed ledgers merely to record trade-finance obligations, participants can potentially settle the monetary component on the same digital infrastructure.

For institutional investors, this creates a different value proposition from cryptocurrency speculation. The potential economic benefit comes from improving liquidity management, collateral velocity and cross-border settlement, while the underlying stablecoin remains linked to a conventional currency.

Qivalis Builds a European Banking Network

Qivalis itself has expanded rapidly as European banks seek a regulated euro-denominated alternative to the dollar-dominated stablecoin market. The consortium has onboarded 37 European banks during the past year and grown from a single employee to approximately 40 staff members.

The company is also close to securing an Electronic Money Institution license from the Dutch Central Bank, or DNB. Qivalis says it aims to launch its regulated euro stablecoin by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval. The project was established by European banks specifically to develop a regulated euro-denominated digital payment instrument.

A Multi-Currency Stablecoin Market Could Emerge

Qivalis expects stablecoin markets to become increasingly multi-currency, rather than remaining dominated by U.S. dollar tokens. Sell argues that while dollar stablecoins may be useful in countries with volatile local currencies, European, Japanese and Korean businesses are likely to require digital versions of their domestic currencies.

For crypto investors, the development highlights a potentially important transition from stablecoins as crypto-market settlement tools toward institutional financial infrastructure. The next indicators will be Qivalis’s regulatory approval, stablecoin launch, bank participation and actual trade-finance transaction volumes. If adoption develops, stablecoins could increasingly function as the settlement layer connecting global commerce, banking liquidity and tokenized financial markets.